School Technology Policies

I was in a conference session recently where a superintendent said that he had a) a FaceBook account, and b) encouraged students to connect to him through the account. Ethically, as an educator, is he now required to report any inappropriate actions that he sees when viewing students’ sites? What if a teacher has pictures of a holiday party where educators are shown drinking alcoholic beverages? While this may be a “gray” area, it treads on most states’ ethical guidelines for presenting yourself professionally in a community setting.

School districts are wrestling with the concepts of social networking and appropriate privacy. This is not a trivial matter, because what happens after school ends and the teacher gets home suddenly becomes public domain if the teacher uses social networking, too. What if the teacher posts something that will be broadcast widely, such as a Facebook status update, that reads, “These kids in my class are going to kill me this year with their poor behavior.” How should an administrator respond if that is brought to the school’s attention via a parent? Even worse, via a student?

So, a following question would be: How do you, as an educator, keep your private life, well, private? If you have a social networking account, what are the rules about “friending” students and other educators?